The Arkansaw traveler., 1887-08-27
KEEPING A DIARY.
Charles Dudley Warner, in Harper's.

ulary as merlCOr1Ous occupation. The young are urged to take up this cross it is supposed to benefit girls especially. Whether women should do it is to some minds not an open question, although there is on record the case of the Frenchman who tried to shoot himself when he heard that his wife was keeping diary. The intention of suicide may have arisen from the fear that his wife was keep ing a record of his own peccadilloes rather than her own thoughts and emotions. Or it may have been from the fear that she was putting down those little conjugal remarks, which the husband always dislikes to have thrown up to him, and which wo- man can usually quote accurately, it may be for years and it may be forev- CT, without the help if diary. So we can appreciate without approving the terror of the Frenchman at living on and on in the same house with a growing diary. For it is not simply that the little book of judgment is there in black and white, but that the maker of it is increasing her power of minute observation and analytic ex- pression. In discussing the question whether woman should keep diary it is understood that it is not merely memorandum of events and engage ments, such as both men and women of business and affairs necessarily keep, but the daily record which sets down feelings, emotions and opinions. But this is question that applies to men as well as to women.
 It has been assumed that the diary serves two good purposes. It is dis ciplinary exercise for the keeper of it, and perhaps moral guide, and it has great historical value. AS to the first, it may be helpful to order, method, discipline, and it may be an Indulgence of spleen, whims and unwholesome criticism and conceit. The habit of of saying right out what you think of everybody is not good one, and the record of such opinions and impress ions, while it is not so mischievous to the public as talking may be, is harm- ful to the recorder. And when we come to the historical value of the di- ary, we confess to growing suspic- ion of it. It is such deadly weapon when it comes to light after the pass age of years. It has the authority which the spoken word of it's keeper never had. 1t is co parte and cannot be cross-eXamined. The supposition is that being contemporaneous with the events spoken of it must be true, and that it is an honest record. Now, as matter of fact, we doubt if people were any more honest as to themselves or others in a diary than out of it :; and rumors, reported facts and i'm pressions set down daily in the heat and haste of the prejudicial hour are about as apt to be wrong as right. Two diaries of the same event rarely agree. And in turning over an old diary we never knew what to allow for the personal equation. The diary is greatly relied on by the writers of history, but the Drawer doubts if there is any such liar in the world, even when the keeper of it is honest. It is certain to be partisan, and more liable to be misinformed than news paper which exercises some care in view of immediate publicity. The writer happens to know of two diaries which record, on the testimony ofeye- witnesses, the circumstances of the last hours of Garfield, and they differ in essential particulars. One of these may turn up 50 years from now and be accepted as true. An infinite amount of gossip goes in to diaries about men and women that would not stand the test of moments contem- porary publication. But by and by it may all be used to smirch or bright en unjustly some ones character. Sup pose man in the Army of the Poto- mic had recorded daily all his opinions of men and events. Reading it over now, with more light and ulster knowledge of character and of meas ures, is it not probable that he would find it tissue of misconceptions? Few things are actually what they seem to-day; they are colored both by misapprehensions and by moods. If a man writes letter or makes report of an occurrence for immediate pub lication, subject to universal criticism, there is some restraint on him. In his private letter, or diary especially, he is apt to set down what comes into his head at the moment, often without much effort at verification.
 
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